More than a decade ago, the right-wing extremist terrorist cell known as NSU came across the novel The Turner Diaries by American neo-Nazi William L. Pierce. This work served as a guide for other neo-Nazis world-wide. The performance combines documentary material with fictional literature and creates a disturbing scenario that fundamentally questions the common notion of lone perpetrators.

Two short dance films from Farm in the Cave. Effemery is about fleeting moments. It was filmed during early Covid in a vast, empty building, with 20 performers in permanent motion. Commander is inspired by real online chats of the neo-Nazi group FKD, which was led by a thirteen-year-old boy operating under the nickname Commander. It uses the chats themselves as the text.

The ability to exist in symbiosis with other creatures on the planet, the importance of respecting the value of all beings, the uniqueness of species and the struggle to preserve them – these are the main themes of the production. The force and power of nature will always find their way and do what is necessary. Riders views human action through the eyes of birds. Of the ancient inhabitants of our planet, sentient, intelligent, free beings, shrouded in mythology. Of the silent observers of our destinies. We had learned from them, admired them and worshiped them. Then we forgot. Birds are the only surviving group of dinosaurs. They were here before us and they will be here long after us.

Based on a dark comedy written in the Terezín Ghetto in 1944 by camp inmate Karel Švenk but banned on the night of its dress rehearsal for fear of SS reprisals. The play the actors are rehearsing in the film pits bike riders (Jews) against lunatics (Nazis), as did the absurdist original—a silly story with a deeply serious message. The Last Cyclist allows audiences to bear witness, as if we too are attend-ing that fateful rehearsal in the concentration camp.

Noon combines documentary and physical theater to tell about the events which followed after the demonstra- tion of eight people in Red Square on August 25, 1968, using visual theater of insistent images. It is inspired by the poetry of Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Vadim Delone and other Soviet dissident poets of the 1960s and 1970s, along with live string quartet accompaniment.

Boa is the first choreographic play in the history of the National Stary Theatre in Kraków. Its main theme and explored space of movement is desire, how it is demon- strated, embodied, and performed. In Boa, choreographer Paweł Sakowicz wonders about paths by which desire circulates in the body; how it is created through a spatial orientation of bodies; how it can be intermediated through popular culture, discourses, and technologies.

DOCUMENTARY FILM

The Art of Dissent celebrates the power of artistic engagement in Czechoslovakia to build a civil society before and after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. The documentary’s main protagonists—playwright Vaclav Havel, banned singer Marta Kubisova, and underground rock group the Plastic People of the Universe—became the most recognizable dissidents during the 1970s and 1980s.